In the fourteenth episode of the third season of Enterprise, Archer and his crew come up with an elaborate means of getting information. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.
Trigger Warning: For consent, nonconsensual drugging, and talk of gaslighting/unreality.
I get the sense that Enterprise wants to be an edgy show. I don’t mean that to imply the show is trying to be shocking or upsetting for the sake of it, but that this season in particular is making an attempt to do something different than the other Trek outings. I don’t know that it’s all that different; both Deep Space Nine and Voyager attempted grittier stories with varying success, of course. In “Stratagem,” however, Archer and his crew go for straight-up manipulation as a solution, and I think we’re supposed to ask whether this is ethical or not?
Here’s the deal, though: placing that onus on the audience without any clue otherwise seems like a way for the writers to actually avoid any real commitment to exploring the unorthodox techniques we keep getting from Archer. That’s an undeniable part of season three, too! Ever since Enterprise got to The Expanse, Archer has bent the rules with a higher frequency. I think that’s a fascinating thing to examine through Archer’s eyes, but the script has to ask difficult question in order to count as an examination.
Look, we spend a good third of “Stratagem” wondering if the events onscreen are real. It’s not the first time that a significant amount of time passed in between episodes, and I even figured that something about this story was fake. There was just no way Enterprise would jump ahead three years, kill off the entire cast aside from Archer, and turn into a survival story for Degra and Archer. (Plus, that wouldn’t be that interesting.) Then, when it’s all revealed to be an elaborate creation of the crew meant to trick Degra into giving up information, I was impressed! It’s a lot of work to get one location out of a person.
So, did the writers want me to ask if it was ethical for this team to do this to Degra? I can’t be certain. When Phlox explains how he’ll literally wipe out weeks worth of memories from Degra’s mind, no one hesitates. No one talks about how messed up it is to constantly give someone sedatives without their consent. So is it ethically sound? Should you manipulate someone’s reality in such a way that technically qualifies the act as gaslighting? Because this man and his people were responsible for a massive terrorist attack on Earth, does that negate the moral implications of Archer and his crew’s actions?
Maybe, but it’s never mentioned. Not even once! Normally, Phlox is hesitant to do anything without a patient’s consent, but he gleefully speaks of that violation in regards to Degra. So why avoid this? If the intent was to make this series darker in this respect, then you can’t just say nothing about these sort of things. The script has to make it clear that there is some sort of conflict, some sense that what’s being done is wrong or complicated or even confusing. Instead, that onus is placed entirely on us, as I mentioned earlier. We’re the ones left to decide what the ramifications of this will be. And in a script devoid of any commentary on the behavior of its main characters, it’s incredibly easy to view this all as something positive. In the absence of an internal criticism, we default to acceptance. Our heroes did something good to attain a good thing. Who cares what that actually means?
The video for “Stratagem” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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